To be honest, you’re the only male erotica author I know. Are men who write erotica really so rare, or am I just surrounded in a sea of talented women?

Nobilis Reed: They may not be as rare as you think they are. First of all, there are some very talented male erotica writers out there, like M. Christian, Thomas Roche, and Bernie Mojzes. I’ve featured some of them on my podcast. Second, some of the erotica writers that you think are female, aren’t. Some of them use female pseudonyms online, mostly as a marketing strategy. I could name names, but…I’m sworn to secrecy.

That being said, there probably are more women writing erotica than men. I think our culture has begun to find female sexuality more tolerable than male sexuality, at least in the mainstream. That’s why you’re more likely to see two women kissing on network TV than two men kissing, for example. Men are being told now that they need to keep their desires hidden, in order not to scare people.

Another reason, I think, is because there are more women reading erotica than men. It’s not a huge proportion, probably something like 70-30 or so, but the larger pool of readers means a larger pool of writers, just because most writers start out as readers.

As for why there are more women reading erotica than men, I can’t say. That difference may also be cultural. I refuse to believe it’s inherent or essential to men or women.

4 Comments on “Why are so few men writing erotica?”

Women seem to be more attracted to the story of what leads to an erotic encounter. This is shown up in those recent Youtube clips where a fellow received 100 knock-backs when propositioning sex to women, where the woman got a 50-50 response. Men are more likely to just want sex than to be interested in the lead-up and all that courting stuff. This is of course a generalization and I am sure there are women who just want a good fuck. Having said that, the demand for erotica is just the next step up from soft-core Mills and Boon. Men are more stimulated by visuals then women are, and this means that men are more likely to want to see hard porn, and less likely to read erotica.

I’ve wanted to, and tried, but like bwglynn said above, reading erotica is mostly a woman thing and describing a man with all the detail that erotica tends to do doesn’t appeal to me.

I remember some old cowboy novels from the 70s I think that had explicit sex scenes in them, obviously geared towards men. The sex scenes tended to be brief but frequent with not much detail. Just a difference in the way men and women think.